Vladimir Nabokov

ARTICLES ABOUT VLADIMIR NABOKOV BY DATE - PAGE 3

- Orland Park trustee candidate John Fotopoulos' first name was incorrectly reported in an article in Friday's Metro southwest section. - Incorrect information was given in yesterday's Friday section for the brunches at the Drake Hotel, 140 E. Walton St. Prices for the regular Sunday brunches (from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.) are $39.50 for adults, $19 for children 6 to 11. Prices on Easter and Mother's Day are $59 for adults, $28 for children 6 to 11. Seatings on Easter and Mother's Day are every 15 minutes from 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. The phone number for reservations is 312-440-8484.

Teenagers who feel invisible--or not taken seriously--might be inspired by the stories in Thomas A. Jacobs' "Teens on Trial: Young People Who Challenged the Law--and Changed Your Life" (Free Spirit Publishing, $14.95). Jacobs, a judge on the Maricopa County (Arizona) Superior Court, Juvenile Division, has compiled accounts of 21 court cases in which teenagers challenged the law (often succeeding in changing it) on issues of national importance. Each section lays out the facts of the case, gives the ruling and explains the logic behind it and briefly cites related cases.

Dr. Donald Austin, Ph.D., passed away Saturday, Dec. 16, 2000, of cardiac arrest in Kankakee, IL. Dr. Austin was the beloved son of the late Guy Austin and of the Artist, the late Esther Austin, both of Chicago. Dr. Austin is survived by his devoted sister, Marjorie Holzman of Springfield, MO; his niece, Dr. Nancy Ceaser; and his three nephews, Douglas, John and Russell Holzman. Upon earning his Bachelor's Degree from the University of Illinois, Champaign, and his Doctorate from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. Dr. Austin spent the majority of his life as a Professor of Mathematics at Northwestern.

By John Beer. John Beer, a poet, teaches composition at Robert Morris College | December 19, 1999

NABOKOV'S BLUES: The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius By Kurt Johnson and Steve Coates Zoland Books, 372 pages, $27 Vladimir Nabokov met English novelist and physicist C.P. Snow at a cocktail party in Ithaca, N.Y., in the late 1950s. Although the topic of their conversation is not recorded, Nabokov preserved his unflattering judgment of Snow ("horrible") in his diary. Perhaps Snow recoiled as well upon meeting a living repudiation of his famous "Two Cultures" thesis--the notion that scientists and humanists are incomprehensible to one another, separated by a vast gulf in socialization and professional viewpoint.

CHASING MONARCHS: Migrating With the Butterflies of Passage By Robert Michael Pyle Houghton Mifflin, 307 pages, $24 Three summers ago, naturalist Robert Michael Pyle set out to "migrate with the monarchs," as he puts it, heading north from his home in Washington State to meet up with southward-bound monarch butterflies in British Columbia, then follow them south toward the Mexican border and their wintering grounds. Pyle's stated scientific aim was to settle the question posed by what he calls (perhaps overstating it a bit)

By Louise DeSalvo. Louise De Salvo's most recent book in "Writing As a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives," She is completing a book about adultery | May 2, 1999

VERA (MRS. VLADIMIR NABOKOV): Portrait of a Marriage By Stacy Schiff Random House, 456 pages, $27.95 Stacy Schiff's illuminating biography of the Nabokov marriage invites us to contemplate the alchemy by which the creative process transmutes life into art. Despite Vera Nabokov's protestations that she functioned merely as muse, she was as significant a subject in Vladimir Nabokov's fiction as, say, June Miller was in that of Henry Miller's....

`In Cold Blood" caused most of the trouble. Over lunch in the Bertlesmann-Random House executive dining room in Manhattan last October, a group of prominent scholars and authors reflected on the last 100 years of literature. That's where the tranquility ended. Soon an argument broke out, sparked by the suggestion that Truman Capote's 1966 account of a gruesome murder in Kansas should be included in the Century's Best Non-fiction Books ( in English). "Many people didn't believe it was non-fiction," said David Ebershoff, publishing director of the Modern Library, which sponsored the list.

A New York publisher has canceled plans to publish a retold "Lolita" by an Italian author after Vladimir Nabokov's son sued over copyright concerns. Dmitri Nabokov, representing his late father's estate, said "Lo's Diary," by Pia Pera, was a ripoff of the original novel published in 1955. Farrar, Straus & Giroux agreed Friday to settle by canceling publication of the book, which had been planned for July. Publishing house head Roger Straus said he settled in response to concerns by some of his writers that their creations could be similarly appropriated.

After all the fuss, after the cries of 1950s-style censorship and cultural cowardice, and after the rescue by Showtime that allows it to be shown in wide release for the first time on the pay-cable television channel Sunday night (8 p.m.), Adrian Lyne's movie version of the reliably scandalous "Lolita" turns out to be a magnificent book on tape. When Jeremy Irons, cast as the damaged, pathetic French literature scholar Humbert Humbert, reads aloud Vladimir Nabokov's words in voiceover, the film is mesmerizing.

The controversial film "Lolita" will make it to the big screen in the United States after all. Television network Showtime has sold the U.S. rights to the film to independent distributor Samuel Goldwyn Co., which plans to open the film in New York and Los Angeles on Sept. 25, followed by a nationwide roll-out. Adrian Lyne directed the update of Vladimir Nabokov's classic novel about a college professor's obsession with his landlady's teenage daughter. "Lolita" stars Jeremy Irons, Dominique Swain, Melanie Griffith and Frank Langella.